1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an integrated apparatus having a kneading part and an injecting part, which includes the kneading part for performing kneading of a material and the injecting part for performing material injection for injection molding with the kneaded material and in which the kneading part and the injecting part are connected together, i.e., to a kneading and injecting apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when manufacturing a molded article as a final product by an injection molding apparatus, there has been performed a kneading (i.e., compounding) process of a loaded material while heating the material by means of, for example, a kneading apparatus that has a screw shaft of, for example, a single-axis or twin-axis configuration. The material is extruded from the kneading apparatus and thereafter the kneaded material is pelletized. In such a pelletizing process, the process of producing pellets of a prescribed size is performed by, for example, solidifying the material in a plasticized state by cooling and thereafter cutting the material into a prescribed size. Subsequently, the thus-produced pellets are loaded into the injection molding apparatus, and the material is plasticized with a pressure applied thereto while being reheated. By weighing a prescribed amount of the material and extruding the weighed material by the screw shaft in this state, loading, i.e., injection of the material into the communicating injection mold is performed.
However, when the kneading apparatus and the injection molding apparatus are individually used as described above, the material, which has been heated and plasticized by the kneading apparatus, is to be reheated and plasticized in the injection molding apparatus. Therefore, not only the number of processes to the injection molding is increased but also the frequency of the thermal history of the material is increased, resulting in a reduction of the physical properties of the material and sometimes causing an adverse effect on the quality of the molded article to be manufactured.
In order to address the above-described conventional problems, an integrated apparatus in which the kneading apparatus and the injection molding apparatus are mutually connected and which is able to feed the material kneaded in the kneading apparatus as it is to the injection molding apparatus and to perform injection of the mold material into an injection molding mold has been considered (refer to, for example, JP H07-106586 B2).